Jerusalem Office for Arafat Just One of Summit Ideas

Imagine Yasser Arafat, stubbly beard, olive fatigues, checkered Arab headdress, holding court from inside the ancient walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, hallowed land that has been off limits to the Palestinian leader for decades.

As implausible as that might seem, it was one of the proposals under consideration this past week when Israeli, Palestinian and American negotiators struggled to find a solution to rival claims to Jerusalem.

Failure to agree on the holy city ultimately scuttled the summit at Camp David, Md. But negotiators from both sides Thursday revealed details and impressions from the two-week marathon that suggested they had indeed moved significantly toward reaching a deal.

Most important, both sides seemed to think that enough groundwork was laid to continue talks, with low-level contacts to resume as early as Sunday.

Giving Arafat an office inside the Old City’s Muslim Quarter, a few yards from Judaism’s holiest site, was one of the ideas that indicate just how far the Israelis were willing to go in the interest of securing a peace deal, and how far they’ve come in their mind-set about co-existence, security and concessions. Previously unthinkable, or at least unmentionable, notions about sharing or dividing Jerusalem were put forward or entertained repeatedly, especially by the Israeli delegation headed by Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

For the Palestinians, who want full sovereignty over the Old City and East Jerusalem, proposals such as the Arafat office showed just how far apart the two sides remain.

Still, less than 48 hours after the summit collapsed, Israeli and Palestinian officials stopped pointing fingers and started making positive noises about prospects for the future.

The officials said Thursday that they still believed a deal by the self-imposed deadline of Sept. 13 was possible. The sentiment was echoed by the White House, frustrated sponsor of the Camp David meeting. To do that, the two sides would need new ideas, new flexibility and continued external pressure.

With the talks deadlocking late last week, American mediators looking for alternative ways to share Jerusalem raised the idea of establishing an office for the Palestine Liberation Organization inside the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, according to Israeli negotiator Gilead Sher.

Israel agreed to consider the proposal as part of a comprehensive agreement ending the conflict once and for all if Arafat would agree to it. But Arafat rejected the idea immediately as insufficient because it did not include broader control over the Old City, according to participants in the talks. In all of the ideas Israel agreed to consider, overall sovereignty of Jerusalem remained with the Jewish state.

The Palestinians are demanding East Jerusalem as their capital, but Israel insists on retaining Jerusalem as its eternal capital, the center of the Jewish faith and nation. Jews, Muslims and Christians all hold the city sacred.

Sher, a Barak confidant and an attorney, said in an interview and in comments to Israeli radio that except for Jerusalem, Israel and the Palestinians were “pretty close” to an agreement.

On Jerusalem, he said, Israel was open to giving “functional autonomy” over much of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians, with the Jewish state retaining responsibilities that would include security and planning and zoning.

On other issues, Sher said, the Palestinians had agreed to positions previously unthinkable from their perspective. These included allowing a limited number of Jewish settlement blocs to remain in the West Bank and establishment of a fund to relocate and improve the living conditions of Palestinian refugees--without insisting that they be allowed to return to homes in Israel they fled or were forced to abandon in the 1948 Israeli war of independence.

“The rest would have fallen in place once Jerusalem [was] solved,” he said.

A Palestinian spokesman quickly denied that the Palestinians had agreed to settlement blocs. Arafat, speaking to a homecoming crowd in the West Bank city of Ramallah, declared that the right of refugees to return home was as “sacred” as the Palestinian demand for Jerusalem.

Arafat received the brunt of blame, from President Clinton and Israel, for spoiling the summit with his inflexibility. Despite that, there were signs of movement from the Palestinians.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that, while nothing raised at Camp David was binding, the two sides had certainly moved closer. “I don’t think our negotiations will ever be the same after Camp David,” he told the ABC television program “Nightline” on Wednesday night.

Erekat estimated that an agreement to end more than half a century of bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict was 80% complete.

Arafat, who departs today for a tour of Europe and Arab countries in an effort to drum up backing, was received for the second day Thursday by a crowd cheering support for his refusal to bend to Israeli and American pressure.

The crowd chanted demands for a Palestinian state “in September.” Arafat reiterated his vow to declare the state with Jerusalem as its capital. But he avoided mention of a date.

Sept. 13 was a self-imposed deadline for ending the so-called final status talks that would produce a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement. It then became the date by which Arafat said he would declare his long-sought independent state, agreement or no. Such a unilateral declaration could lead to a nasty spiral of violence and would be soundly criticized by Washington. The Palestinian leader’s aides are increasingly backing away from the date as hard and fast, but the goal remains prominent in their thinking.